Subsequently the sceptre passed from Rome to Byzantium, and Egypt again became subject to Greek influence. During the Ptolemies’ rule Abyssinia was Egyptianized, and much Greek influence penetrated that country of Hamites ruled by Semites, resulting in the foundation of the semi-civilized kingdom of Axum in north-eastern Abyssinia with a port (Adulis) on Annesley Bay. This Hellenized and, later on, Christian State flourished for about six centuries from the commencement of the Christian era, and conquered in the 6th century the opposite Arab country of Yaman. Under the Roman and Byzantine Empire the Red Sea, the coast of Somaliland, and Equatorial East Africa were much more carefully explored and even charted; and it is said that the Greeks settled on the island of Sokotra. The extent of knowledge which the Roman world possessed at the beginning of the Christian era is displayed by the celebrated Periplus of the Red Sea, written by a Greek merchant of Alexandria about 80 A.C. This work shows that Greek commerce extended to Zanzibar and Dar-es-Salaam; for by Rhapta is obviously indicated a port on the east coast of Africa which can only be Dar-es-Salaam, the modern capital of German East Africa. Opposite to this was the Island of Menouthias, intended (as described in the Periplus) for Zanzibar, and mentioned even then as being a region under the suzerainty of the Kings of Yaman, and much resorted to by Arab merchants from the port of Muza, no doubt the abandoned harbour of Uda, some distance north of Mokha. Beyond this the knowledge of the Greek writer of the Periplus did not extend; but further allusions to Menouthias or other islands near the east coast of Africa, to be found in later Greek and Latin writers on geography, seem to apply much more to Madagascar than to Zanzibar.